Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Houston's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Houston?
Your $100,000 in Houston has the same purchasing power as $100,050 in the average US city.
Demographics and workforce data from the US Census ACS 5-Year.
bachelor's or higher
Climate, safety, and walkability indicators.
See a side-by-side breakdown of cost of living, housing, and salaries.
Popular comparisons
Sorted by affordability — most affordable first.
Within 10 points of Houston's cost index of 100, sorted by closest match.
Houston has a handful of real selling points, and they're not the kind of thing you find in a brochure. Texas doesn't tax your paycheck and genuinely walkable, not just walkable-on-paper are the headliners, plus 1 more things worth knowing. The rest is below.
Living in Houston means no state income tax on your salary — Texas is one of nine states that simply doesn't have one. On a $100k income that's typically thousands of dollars a year that stay in your account instead of going to a state revenue department.
With a Walk Score of 82/100, Houston is in the category where car ownership becomes a real choice rather than the default. Errands work on foot, the city's built dense enough that things are actually close together, and the parking-and-gas budget can quietly disappear.
Bike Score of 78/100 in Houston. That puts it in the small group of US cities where you can do groceries, commute, and run errands on a bike without it being a feat of urban survival.
Reasons are pulled from Houston's actual data — Census ACS, BLS, BEA, NOAA, EPA AQS, FBI, and Walk Score. We don't list positives that aren't supported by the numbers, which is why different cities show different sections.
It's rare. Winters in Houston run about 46°F — cold-snap mornings happen, real snowfall doesn't, except maybe once a decade.
Not very. Average winter temperatures of about 46°F mean Houston skips the harsh-winter problem most of the country has. A handful of cold mornings, otherwise sweater weather at worst.
Properly hot. Houston's summer averages around 94°F with daily highs that routinely break 100°F. The trick to summer here is starting the day at sunrise and staying inside through the worst of it.
Houston falls in roughly USDA Zone 10. The zone classification is based on average annual minimum temperatures, so it's the right lookup for whether perennials and trees will overwinter here. Note that this is approximate from our winter-temperature data — check the USDA map for the exact zone before betting an expensive plant on it.
Around 62 feet (19 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Houston's altitude shows up in daily life.
Hurricane season covers June through November, with peak activity in late summer and early fall. For Houston, the practical advice is: have a few days of water and supplies on hand from August onward, know your evacuation route, and don't wait for the news to tell you a storm is "probably nothing" — track the cone yourself.
Worse than the national norm, but it depends where. Houston's ~5,797 per 100,000 reflects a citywide aggregate. Some neighborhoods here are notably safer than the average; others are notably worse. Worth looking at the specific area, not the city-level number.
It's a middle-of-the-road US city on cost. Houston's index of 100 sits within a few points of the national average — your money buys roughly what it would in a typical American metro.
Houston scores 82/100 on Walk Score, putting it in the "very walkable" tier. Transit Score is 44 out of 100. It's the kind of city where you don't think of going to the grocery store as "going" to the grocery store.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $69,965 to live in Houston the way a $70,000 earner lives in a typical US city. The math gets less forgiving the lower you go below that. Median rent in Houston runs about $1,235/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.